Today I went to my first local PMI chapter function. There wasn’t too much time for mingling and meeting people since it was over the lunch hour, although I did meet some nice people I hope to interact with more. Timothy Johnson from Carpe Factum was the guest speaker, and his presentation was titled “What your project team isn’t telling you.”

Tim is a great speaker, he had us laughing and very engaged. He spoke a lot about the political aspects in project teams and the organizations and stakeholders involved. He gave a lot of great tips and described the majority of project environments fairly accurately. He also talked a little about his book, “Race Through the Forest”. It’s a project management fable. There are so many business fables out there, now project managers have one too!

I spoke with Tim briefly after his presentation and he told me a little about his blog, CarpeFactum.com. I’ve been able to read a few of his posts, and it appears he talks much about organizational behavior and politics, and of course the pursuit of accomplishment. I already saw him quote Stephen Covey in a post, so that wins some points in my book too. I subscribed to his RSS feed so I can keep up with his blog.

Tim said he would make the presentation he used today available to the Sioux Empire PMI Chapter on their website, so when they post that I’ll definitely get a post and link on this blog to it. There’s some great content in there.

So what does Carpe Factum mean? It’s Latin for “Seize the Accomplishment”. Or, as Tim humorously put it today, “It’s Latin for, ‘get ‘er done!’”